AdHocnium Asks: Why Don’t Consultants Publish Their Rates?

Money: the final frontier.
You are more likely to know what your best friend eats for breakfast or how many times a week he or she has sex, than how much money they make.
Despite all the Web 2.0 talk of transparency, openness, and honesty, you’d be hard pressed to find out what most new media consultants charge.AdHocnium – the new adhoc social media consultancy launched last week at LeWeb in Paris – announced their rates on their website – generating a lot of buzz.
I’ve been publishing my fees on my website, whatsnextonline.com, for the past 10 years. But until last week I was one of very, very few consultants who do.
AdHocnium founder Chris Heuer writes

“Enabling potential clients to know the rates up front should end up saving everyone a lot of time by avoiding conversations that lead to nowhere due to false assumptions and may even get more opportunities from clients who may have assumed the services were too expensive.”

1. Because they will work for less or more depending on client’s “budget” and “pain”.
2. Because of the perception that putting your rates up is tantamount to “qualifying out some potential clients” – which if you ask someone like me its the right thing to do, wish more people did that.
3. Because the “price” discussion is the biggest difference for most consultants regardless of their double-speak that it is not.
BTW I know that no sentence should begin with because but it just felt right :)

i believe some other consultants have always published their fees, but very few have made them prominent. usually they are a few clicks down.
i’ve always put mine in the nav bar, with a bold link, right on top of every page of my site.
and yet, people call and ask me what i charge. :>)

I think it’s primarily that consultants don’t want to show all of their cards so they can take advantage of arbitrage and charge above-market rates. I do agree that it erects a large barrier. Adhocnium is so much more accessible now that price is out of the way. Their target market can afford their rates.
In the social circle, some are unfortunate to have peers/friends who judge them by how much they make. I’ve felt this pressure myself.
Good post, thank you. First time I’ve been to your blog, and won’t be the last.

From a marketing perspective perhaps people just feel like if they tell you the price up front they’re competing on just price rather then on quality of service.
Or perhaps prices vary based on whether you want certain services executed or not. Yes They’ll consult for this much, but are we also building a website, hosting the website, building a widget? Those cost different amounts based on development time.
Its frustrating not having prices for any service, but i guess I’m saying there are some reasons (whether we may buy them or not).

Another factor (at least for me): I charge nonprofits and social cause organizations less than I do large companies, but even there it varies by the project. So we’re hoping AdHocnium starts removing an element of mystery from the process.

This is a very interesting topic. We only publish rates for packages that are pretty standard. I have to look at what you do….is it an hourly rate that you post? When someone emails asking for pricing, I tell them that I need to know what their business needs first. In other words, someone who wants straight consulting would not be as costly as someone who wants me developing communities for them on social networks, developing influencer programs, etc. We do have an hourly consulting rate, both for principal consultants, and for buzz builder/executers. We don’t keep them “hidden”, and it’s certainly not to be dishonest or charge people “exactly what they’ve got”…it’s more that we feel like its important to talk needs before dollars. Have you found that this helps you?

When a prospect says “Whoa that is really expensive” we hear this as a value judgment, that they are saying “You are trying to rip me off” and who wants that? Our clients (we coach small businesses to install a marketing system) overwhelmingly have problems with asking for what they are worth. We have a couple of scripted responses that seem to work: “We want you to decide right up front whether we are a good fit for you, so we provide our fee structure up front”; when you find out a prospect doesn’t have the budget you need, you could say “We are not qualified to help you, and we are happy to recommend XYZ company who will do a great job for you”. When you tell a prospect up front what your fees/costs are, you are allowing them to decide whether your firm is a good fit;this saves small businesses thousands in unbillable work hours.